musical.today Bristol, United Kingdom
Bristol Hippodrome
1,951 seats
Matcham built it for Oswald Stoll with a water tank at the front of the stage that held 100,000 gallons, and a glass screen that could be raised to keep the orchestra dry. The dome still opens, though air conditioning has made that a party trick rather than a necessity.
The building
It came through the war and then lost its stage to a fire in 1948; the auditorium survived and the theatre reopened about ten months later. Three levels seat 1,951.
The stage is one of the largest outside London, which is why the big musicals come here rather than anywhere else in the west. Eddie Cochran played his last concert on it in 1960, hours before the crash near Chippenham that killed him.
Opening dates, capacities and architects on this page come from the theatre's own history pages and from Wikipedia.